Kingsley Guy: End the charade and legalize marijuana

December 15, 2013|Kingsley Guy, COLUMNIST

Former Attorney General Bob Butterworth recently recalled the days of the the 1970s and 1980s when bales of illicit marijuana were washing up on South Florida's beaches: "Who would have thought a few decades later we'd be talking about legalizing marijuana for medical purposes?"

Butterworth made his observation as moderator of a Tower Forum panel on medical marijuana, an issue that is heating up because of a campaign to put a medical marijuana constitutional amendment on next year's statewide ballot.

The Florida Supreme Court has heard oral arguments on whether the proposal meets the criteria for a ballot spot, but regardless of how the court rules, the issue won't go away. So far, 20 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana, and the momentum clearly is on the side of legalization.

Proponents argue that marijuana has proven medical benefits, and has been employed for thousands of years to treat ailments. Opponents ask what is to stop doctors from abusing the law and issuing prescriptions to stressed-out college students who claim they need marijuana to settle their nerves during final exams.

Those making the latter argument are divorced from reality. College students who want to indulge in marijuana have no problem finding a supply, so a prescription would be superfluous. Indeed, if the stressed-out students were underage, it would be easier for them to purchase marijuana than to buy a six-pack of beer.

It's time to get serious and end the charade: Forget about legalizing marijuana in Florida just for medical reasons. The state should join Colorado and Washington in legalizing marijuana for recreational purposes as well.

The federal government should get on board, too, and call a halt to the failed drug war declared in 1970 by Richard Nixon. The chief beneficiary of this war isn't the honest citizenry of the country. Instead, it's organized crime, which rakes in tens of billions of dollars annually by supplying drugs to willing buyers. Prison guards also benefit because the war fills the prisons and provides them with jobs.

Now, before you accuse me of being a left-wing, commie, fellow-traveling revolutionary, allow me to point out that a number of people on the right have advocated ending the drug war. They include the late journalist William F. Buckley, the intellectual godfather of the modern conservative movement; George P. Shultz, Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State; and economist Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate whose thinking laid the economic groundwork for the Reagan revolution.

Friedman took a scholarly approach in arriving at his opposition. He analyzed the profits that flowed to organized crime versus the cost of fighting the drug war. He concluded the cost in dollars and lost freedom was too high for society to pay, and that the profits were so great to the drug cartels that the war could never be won.

Americans performed a similar calculation in deciding in 1933 to end Prohibition, which outlawed alcohol consumption. Just about everybody now concedes Prohibition was a failed attempt at social engineering.

Advocates of the drug war claim that without it, drug use would explode in the United States, but that is by no means a given. During the 18th and 19th centuries, people consumed alcohol on an epic scale. George Washington's Mount Vernon was the largest liquor producer in the colonies. In the 1820s, the workers on the Erie Canal were paid 50 cents a day for their labor, along with a quart of whiskey. Today, per capita alcohol consumption in this country is about half of what it was back then. Tobacco also is a legal product, but consumption has been steadily declining because of peer pressure and an increasing knowledge of tobacco's dangers.

A far better way to address drug use is through regulation and taxation, with the tax money used to finance drug education and treatment programs.

As the debate over medical marijuana heats up, I keep having a vision of legislators meeting in a Tallahassee drinking and dining establishment plotting how to keep the marijuana amendment off the ballot. After three martinis and a copious amount of wine or other alcoholic beverages, they stumble out of the bistro, congratulating themselves on how they are upholding the virtue of the state.

Hypocrisy? Sure. But after a few drinks, hypocrisy isn't something that concerns too many legislators.